Religious communities and monasticism Books
Cornell University Press Dark Age Nunneries
Book SynopsisIn Dark Age Nunneries, Steven Vanderputten dismantles the common view of women religious between 800 and 1050 as disempowered or even disinterested witnesses to their own lives. It is based on a study of primary sources from forty female monastic communities in Lotharingiaa politically and culturally diverse region that boasted an extraordinarily high number of such institutions. Vanderputten highlights the attempts by women religious and their leaders, as well as the clerics and the laymen and -women sympathetic to their cause, to construct localized narratives of self, preserve or expand their agency as religious communities, and remain involved in shaping the attitudes and behaviors of the laity amid changing contexts and expectations on the part of the Church and secular authorities.Rather than a dark age in which female monasticism withered under such factors as the assertion of male religious authority, the secularization of its institutions, and the precipitous Trade ReviewThe book illuminates the little-explored landscape of female monasticism. Vanderputten demonstrates that the current narratives remain oversimplified, and opens up possibilities for its revision. * Sehepunkte *Previous generations of modern historians describe Lotharingian female monasticism as inadequate, lax, and unobservant. In Dark Age Nunneries, Steven Vanderputten puts us right by offering a compelling alternative analysis. -- Elisabeth Van Houts, Emmanuel College * SPECULUM *An impressive volume [that] will be useful to all scholars of monasticism, particularly in its nuanced analysis of communities' interaction with normative texts. * EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Setting the Boundaries for Legitimate Experimentation 2. Holy Vessels, Brides of Christ: Ambiguous Ninth-Century Realities 3. Transitions, Continuities, and the Struggle for Monastic Lordship 4. Reforms, Semi-reforms, and the Silencing of Women Religious in the Tenth Century 5. New Beginnings 6. Monastic Ambiguities in the New Millennium Conclusion
£999.99
Fordham University Press From the Monastery to the City: Hildegard of
Book SynopsisThis volume brings together texts of the twelfth-century Hildegard of Bingen and the early-thirteenth-century Francis of Assisi to represent religious spirituality after the Gregorian Reform and just prior to or simultaneous with the formation of universities in Western Europe. In an extraordinary way, Hildegard embodies monastic theology and spirituality and provides a contrast to the new thing that would be created with the study of theology in the new Aristotelian idiom of the universities. But equally in contrast to the Benedictine Hildegard, the thirteenth century witnessed a renewed enthusiasm for a more literal following of Christ in a life of penitence and poverty. This is a life of dependence, not on a superior and enclosed community but on the compassion of society at large. Francis would join this movement on his own terms, attract a following, and gradually formulate a spirituality that sent signals of the need to reform individual lives and the institutions of the Church. These two authors, then, are not joined here because of any shared similarity but to help illustrate two quite different spiritualities that animated the lively European twelfth and thirteenth centuries.Table of ContentsHILDEGARD OF BINGEN I – Introduction to Hildegard and the Texts | 3 II – The Texts | 15 Hildegard on the Prologue Selection from Part I, Vision 4 of The Divine Works | 17 Hildegard on Creation Selection from Part II, Vision 1 of The Divine Works | 39 III – Retrieving Hildegard for Christian Life Today | 59 FRANCIS OF ASSISI I – Introduction to Francis and the Texts | 73 II – Foundational Texts of Francis | 85 The Earlier Rule | 87 Later Admonition and Exhortation to the Brothers and Sisters of Penance | 118 The Canticle of Creatures | 129 A Letter to the Entire Order | 133 The Testament | 141 III – Retrieving Francis for Christian Life Today | 147 Further Reading | 161 About the Series | 163 About the Editors | 169
£8.99
Texas A & M University Press Keeping the Faith: Russian Orthodox Monasticism
Book SynopsisIn Keeping the Faith, Jennifer Jean Wynot presents a clear and concise history of the trials and evolution of Russian Orthodox monasteries and convents and the important roles they have played in Russian culture, both spiritually and politically, from the abortive reforms of 1905 to the Stallnist purges of the 1930s. She shows how, throughout the Soviet period, Orthodox monks and nuns continued to provide spiritual strength to the people, in spite of severe persecution, and despite the ambivalent relationship the Russian state has had toward the Russian church since the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Focusing her study on two provinces, Smolensk and Moscow, Wynot describes the Soviet oppression and the clandestine struggles of the monks and nuns to uphold the traditions of monasticism and Orthodoxy. Their success against heavy odds enabled them to provide a counterculture to the Soviet regime. Indeed, of all the pre-1917 institutions, the Orthodox Church proved the most resilient. Based on previously unavailable Russian archival sources as well as written memoirs and interviews with surviving monks and nuns, Wynot analyzes the monasteries' adaptation to the Bolshevik regime. She challenges standard Western assumptions that Communism effectively killed the Orthodox Church in Russia. She shows that in fact, the role of monks and nuns in Orthodox monasteries and convents is crucial, and that they are largely responsible for the continuation of Orthodoxy in Russia following the Bolshevik revolution.
£35.96
Modern Language Association of America The Life of Saint Eufrosine
Book SynopsisIncludes Old French text and English translation of the life of Saint Eufrosine, who dressed as a man to become a monk in a monastery. Mixing hagiography, romance, epic, and theology, this work from around 1200 CE raises questions about sexuality and identity, family relationships, and spiritual and secular values.Trade ReviewA welcome addition to the growing corpus of medieval hagiographic works in translation designed for upper-division classroom use." —Nancy Vine Durling, Independent Scholar"Ogden's Eufrosine fills a need for saints' lives in translation." —Maureen Boulton, University of Notre Dame
£32.21
Arc Humanities Press Meditation and Prayer in the Eleventh- and
Book Synopsis
£91.74
Arc Humanities Press The Congregation of Tiron: Monastic Contributions
Book Synopsis
£128.33
Arc Humanities Press Ethiopian Jewish Ascetic Religious Communities:
Book Synopsis
£128.33
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Deeds of the Abbots of St Albans: Gesta
Book SynopsisThe Deeds of the abbots of St Albans records the history of one of the most important abbeys in England, closely linked to the royal family and home to a school of distinguished chroniclers, including Matthew Paris and Thomas Walsingham. It offers many insights into the life of the monastery, its buildings and its role as a maker of books, and covers the period from the Conquest to the mid-fifteenth century.Trade ReviewA wonderfully detailed picture of life in the medieval abbey...To have this work available in one volume in English rather than multiple volumes in Latin is a great service to medieval and monastic historians * ALBAN LINK *Table of ContentsIntroduction The translation and its sources The Deeds of the Abbots of St Albans Appendix: A thirteenth-century precis of the Deeds of the Abbots of St Albans Bibliography
£175.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Bishop Æthelwold, his Followers, and Saints'
Book SynopsisAn exploration of how Æthelwold and those he influenced deployed the promotion of saints to implement religious reform. Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester and his associates were some of the most radical monastic reformers in tenth-century Europe. In two generations, they took over most of the powerful churches in the kingdom of England and implemented a number of the policies found in their ambitious monastic manifestos. They also had a major impact on the early development of the kingdom itself, taking a role in the establishment of a shire system that lasted a thousand years, negotiations with invaders, and attempts to create a standardized English language. Æthelwold and his circle were also enthusiastic venerators of saints. This book examines a range of sources, from hagiographies to charters, from liturgy to archaeological remains, to argue that saints' cults helped these men and women secure their power, wealth, and relationships with groups outside their monasteries. The saints that Æthelwold's circle promoted most lavishly were not necessarily the ones that they studied or the ones that matched their ideological agenda. Rather, Æthelwold's monks and nuns connected themselves to a wide range of saints, including the Virgin Mary, St Swithun, Æthelthryth of Ely, Iudoc, Grimbald, Botulf, Cuthbert, and many others. Venerating these saints helped Æthelwold and his followers appeal to other groups in society, including unreformed ecclesiastics, lay nobles, and the workers on their estates. This book therefore not only has implications for the study of early English history and literature, but also for the history of western European monasticism and saints' cults more generally.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Intellectual Priorities, Individuals, and Intra-Communal Veneration 2. Saints and Property 3. Saints and Unreformed Clerics 4. Saints and Nobles 5. Saints, the Laity, and Sacred Spaces 6. Saints and the Second Generation Conclusion Appendix 1: Saints and Property in Royal Grants, 900-1000 Appendix 2: Members of the Circle Appointed to High Ecclesiastical Offices, 956-1016 Bibliography Index
£76.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Women and Monastic Reform in the Medieval West,
Book SynopsisNew approaches to understanding religious women's involvement in monastic reform, demonstrating how women's experiences were more ambiguous and multi-layered than previously assumed. Over the last two decades, scholarship has presented a more nuanced view of women's attitude to and agency in medieval monastic reform, challenging the idea that they were, by and large, unwilling to accept or were necessarily hostile towards reform initiatives. Rather, it has shown that they actively participated in debates about the ideas and structures that shaped their religious lives, whether rejecting, embracing, or adapting to calls for "reform" contingent on their circumstances. Nevertheless, fundamental questions regarding the gendered nature of religious reform are ripe for further examination. This book brings together innovative research from a range of disciplines to re-evaluate and enlarge our knowledge of women's involvement in spiritual and institutional change in female monastic communities over the period c. 1000 - c. 1500. Contributors revise conventional narratives about women and monastic reform, and earlier assumptions of reform as negative or irrelevant for women. Drawing on a diverse array of visual, material and textual sources, it presents "snapshots" of reform from western Europe, stretching from Ireland to Iberia. Case-studies focussing on a number of different topics, from tenth-century female saints' lives to fifteenth-century liturgical books, from the tenth-century Leominster prayerbook to archaeological remains in Ireland, from embroideries and tapestries to the rebellious nuns of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, offer a critical reappraisal of how monastic women (and their male associates) reflected, individually and collectively, on their spiritual ideals and institutional forms.Table of Contents1 Debating Identities: Women and Monastic Reform in the Medieval West, c. 900-1500 Julie Hotchin and Jirki Thibaut 2 Liturgy and Female Monastic Hagiography around the Year 1000: A lecture croisée of the Life of Liutrud, the Second Life of Glodesind of Metz and the So-called Pontificale Romano-Germanicum Gordon Blennemann 3 Remakers of Reform: The Women Religious of Leominster and their Prayerbook Katie Anne-Marie Bugyis 4 The Materiality of Female Religious Reform in Twelfth-Century Ireland: The Case of Co-Located Religious Houses Tracy Collins 5 Women as Witnesses: Picturing Gender and Spiritual Identity in a Twelfth-Century Embroidered Fragment from Northern Germany Julie Hotchin and Vera Henkelmann 6 Mulieres Religiose and Cistercian Nuns in Northern Italy in the Thirteenth Century: A Choice of 'Order' Elena Vanelli 7 Circulation of Books and Reform Ideas between Female Monasteries in Medieval Castile: From Twelfth-Century Cistercians to the Observant Reform Mercedes Pérez Vidal 8 Women, Men and Local Monasticism in Late Medieval Bologna Sherri Franks Johnson 9 Building Community: Material Concerns in the Fifteenth-Century Monastic Reform Jennifer Edwards 10 Who Made Reform Visible? Male and Female Agency in Changing Visual Culture Katharina Ulrike Mersch 11 Nuns, Cistercian Chant and Observant Reform in the Southern Low Countries John Glasenapp Index
£76.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd War and the Making of Medieval Monastic Culture
Book SynopsisThe monastic life, traditionally considered as an area of withdrawal from the world, is here shown to be shaped by metaphors of war, and to be actively engaged with battle in the world outside. An extremely interesting and important book... makes an important contribution to the history of medieval monastic spirituality in a formative period, whilst also fitting into wider debates on the origins, development and impactof ideas on crusading and holy war. Dr William Purkis, University of Birmingham Monastic culture has generally been seen as set apart from the medieval battlefield, as "those who prayed" were set apart from "those whofought". However, in this first study of the place of war within medieval monastic culture, the author shows the limitations of this division. Through a wide reading of Latin sermons, letters, and hagiography, she identifies a monastic language of war that presented the monk as the archetypal "soldier of Christ" and his life of prayer as a continuous combat with the devil: indeed, monks' claims to supremacy on the spiritual battlefield grew even louder asChurch leaders extended the title of "soldier of Christ" to lay knights and crusaders. So, while medieval monasteries have traditionally been portrayed as peaceful sanctuaries in a violent world, here the author demonstrates thatmonastic identity was negotiated through real and imaginary encounters with war, and that the concept of spiritual warfare informed virtually every aspect of life in the cloister. It thus breaks new ground in the history of European attitudes toward warfare and warriors in the age of the papal reform movement and the early crusades. Katherine Allen Smith is Assistant Professor of History, University of Puget Sound.Trade ReviewA major study. [...]Smith's brilliant volume is easily the best synthesis of knightly monastic culture in any language. [...]This book is a highly recommended masterpiece, a model of how historians should investigate the cross-cultural contacts between two elites, seemingly opposites, in the High Middle Ages. * CHURCH HISTORY *This important book is a welcome addition to the recent literature on the relations between medieval church and society. * THE CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW *Skilfully demonstrates that martial imagery was a major force in the creation of monastic culture. [...] Truly a remarkable achievement. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction Encountering War in the Scriptures and Liturgy Monks and Warriors: Negotiating Boundaries Spiritual Warfare: The History of an Idea to c.1200 Martial Imagery in Monastic Texts Warriors as Spiritual Exemplars Conclusion Appendix: The Loricati, c.1050-1250 Bibliography
£71.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd English Nuns and the Law in the Middle Ages:
Book SynopsisLawmen were crucial to the economic wellbeing of medieval nunneries; this book looks at the relationship between them and how cases were conducted. In late medieval England, cloistered nuns, like all substantial property owners, engaged in nearly constant litigation to defend their holdings. They did so using attorneys (proctors), advocates and other "men of law" who actuallyconducted that litigation in the courts of Church and Crown. However, although lawyers were as crucial to the economic vitality of the nunneries as the patrons who endowed them, their role in protecting, augmenting or depleting monastic assets has never been fully investigated. This book aims to address the gap. Using records from the courts of the common law, Chancery, and a variety of ecclesiastical venues, it examines the working relationships withoutwhich cloistered nuns could not have lived in fully enclosed but self-sustainingc communities. In the first part it looks at the six mendicant and Bridgettine houses established in England, and relates the effectiveness and resilience of their cloistered spirituality to the rise of legal professionalism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It then presents cases from ecclesiastical and royal courts which illustrate the work of legal professionals on behalf of their clients. Elizabeth Makowski is Ingram Professor of History, Texas State University.Trade ReviewA learned, useful, and often engaging study of the legal business of these female houses. Overall the book is gracefully written, thoroughly documented, and well disciplined. Its scrupulous organization makes it easy to navigate if one is looking for specific information; it is also an admirable work of sustained and mature scholarship. * MEDIEVAL PROSOPOGRAPHY *This carefully researched book deserves a wide readership. * ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW *A meticulously researched and precisely written study. ... An engaging and useful book. * PARERGON *Provides a valuable treatment of this neglected, and richly documented, dimension of monastic life. ... [It] will be welcomed by ecclesiastical and legal historians alike. * THE RICARDIAN *An elegant and masterful study of a little known aspect of the history of nuns in later medieval England. * HISTORIANS OF WOMEN RELIGIOUS *Table of ContentsIntroduction Cloistered Spirituality and English Nuns Legal Professionalism and English Lawyers Letters of Appointment and Routine Business Proceedings at Common Law Chancery Suits Episcopal Arbitration Papal Appeals Conclusion Appendix Bibliography
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Benedictines in the Middle Ages
Book SynopsisA comprehensive survey of the origins, development, and influence of the most important monastic orders in the middle ages. The men and women that followed the sixth-century customs of Benedict of Nursia (c.480-c.547) formed the most enduring, influential, numerous and widespread religious order of the Latin middle ages. Their liturgical practice, andtheir acquired taste for learning, served as a model for the medieval church as a whole: while new orders arose, they took some of their customs, and their observant and spiritual outlook, from the Regula Benedicti. The Benedictines may also be counted among the founders of medieval Europe. In many regions of the continent they created, or consolidated, the first Christian communities; they also directed the development of their social organisation,economy, and environment, and exerted a powerful influence on their emerging cultural and intellectual trends. This book, the first comparative study of its kind, follows the Benedictine Order over eleven centuries, from their early diaspora to the challenge of continental reformation. JAMES G. CLARK is Professor of History, University of Exeter.Trade ReviewThe author masters with a seldom met richness a wealth of evidence from the infinitude of particular aspects of Benedictine monasticism. This richness not only stems from the broad perspective of the well-read author's tackling the matter, his constant flow of fresh quotations and references to medieval authors of all genres, printed or still in manuscript, but also his discussions and possible explanations carry the note of careful respect for historical truth within reach of historical possibilities. * CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW, July 2013 *A masterful work. * AMERICAN BENEDICTINE REVIEW, December 2012 *[Advances] a distinctive and intensively-researched interpretation of the order's history. * JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY *Impresses from the outset with its detail. * ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW *Many readers will enjoy this book, and it certainly merits a wide audience. It is also a must-read for specialists and is bound to become a key reference in future discussions about ways of telling Benedictinism's story in the Middle Ages. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *This attractive volume offers a broad survey of the Benedictines and their immense influence on the medieval Church. * CHURCH TIMES *Provides a comprehensive introduction and [is] an invaluable resource to all students of the European Middle Ages. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *A work of impeccable and original scholarship. [It] is an especially recommended and seminal contribution to academic library World History, European History, Catholic History, and Medieval Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists. * LIBRARY BOOKWATCH *Table of ContentsIntroduction The Making of an European Order Observance Society Culture The Later Middle Ages Reformation
£25.99
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Medieval Anchoritisms: Gender, Space and the
Book SynopsisAn examination of the importance of anchoritism to social, cultural and religious life in the middle ages. Originating in the deserts of northern Africa in the early years of Christianity, anchoritism, or the enclosed solitary life, gradually metamorphosed into a permanent characteristic of European religiosity; from the twelfth century onwards, and throughout the middle ages, it was embraced with increasing enthusiasm, by devoted laywomen in particular. This book investigates the wider cultural importance of medieval anchoritism within the different religious landscapes and climates of the period. Drawing upon a range of contemporary gender and spatial theories, it focuses on the gender dynamics of this remarkable way of life, and the material spaces which they generated and within which they operated. As such, it unites related - but too often discrete - areas of scholarship, including early Christian anchoritism, anchoritic guidance texts and associated works, fourteenth and fifteenth-century holy womenwith close anchoritic connections, and a range of other less known works dealing with or connected to the anchoritic life. Dr LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY is Senior Lecturer in Gender in English and Medieval Studies at Swansea UniversityTrade ReviewLiz Herbert McAvoy is to be congratulated for her work over the past decade in helping to bring so many hermits out of their seclusion, and for presenting them to a much wider public than that to which they had long become accustomed. * THE ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW *Medieval Anchoritisms [...] draw together the recurrent concerns and approaches that have characterized McAvoy's work to date and applies them to a wide range of texts. The book is [...] always stimulating and has a singleness of purpose that is compelling. * THE CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW *Medieval Anchoritisms provides an enlightening look into the mechanisms at work behind medieval anchoritic lifestyles and the discourses that shaped it. McAvoy thoroughly investigates tensions that existed between medieval and late antique conceptions of masculinity and enclosure that shaped monasticism and anchoritism. * HORTULUS *McAvoy's work [...] is substantial and well-researched, and should be of real interest to its intended audience. * JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY *Table of ContentsIntroduction Miles Christi: Early Anchoritic Masculinity and the Sacred Videte vocacionem vestram: Late Medieval Male Anchoritism and the Spectral Feminine Writing the Flesh: Female Anchoritism and the Master Narrative Reading with the Eyes Closed: Revising the Master Narrative Mapping the Anchorhold: Anchorites, Borderlands and Liminal Spaces Afterword Bibliography
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Goscelin of St Bertin: The Book of Encouragement
Book SynopsisLate eleventh-century spiritual counsel for a woman recluse, anticipating medieval advice literature for anchoresses. Goscelin's Liber Confortatorius is extraordinary both as an example of high-medieval spiritual practice and as a record of a personal relationship. Written in about 1083 by the monk Goscelin to a protegee and personal friend, the recluse Eva, it takes up the tradition of St Jerome's letters of spiritual guidance to women, and anticipates medieval advice literature for anchoresses. As a compendious treatise, it has much to tell us about the intellectual interests and preoccupations of religious people in the late eleventh century. As a personal document, it allows a fascinating and uncommonly intimate insight into the psychology of religious life and the relationships betweenmen and women in the high middle ages. This English translation is presented here with notes and introduction. Monika Otter is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Dartmouth College.Trade ReviewProvides ambitious students of the Middle Ages with a rare opportunity to experience in English the complex, rich, and often impenetrable world of the monastic imagination, as dazzling in what it reveals as it is frustrating for what it conceals. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *
£19.99
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Mechthild of Magdeburg: Selections from The
Book SynopsisSelections from this widely varied original mystical treatise offer insight into the lives of C13 female religious in northern Europe. Here is one of the great surprises of German medieval literature. Compiled between c.1250 and c.1282, it is an extraordinary piece of imaginative writing. It integrates visions, auditions, dialogues, prayers, hymns, lyrical love poems, letters, allegories and parables, and draws creatively on features from hagiography, the disputation, the treatise, and magic spells, as the author documents her relationship with God and with her contemporaries. Selectionsfrom the text are presented here in translation with introduction and notes. Dr Elizabeth A. Andersen teaches in the School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University.Trade ReviewReaders will welcome this thoughtful selection. * JOURNAL OF ENGLISH & GERMANIC PHILOLOGY (hardback edition) *
£19.99
Numata Center for Buddhist Translation & Research. Lives of Great Monks and Nuns
Book SynopsisContains biographies of three great Mahayana masters, sixty-five Chinese nuns from the fourth to sixth centuries, and an account of the life and travels in South Asia of the fifth-century Chinese monk, Faxian.
£31.96
York Medieval Press Cistercians, Heresy and Crusade in Occitania,
Book SynopsisA study of the involvement of the Cistercian Order in the events surrounding the outbreak of heresy - particularly that of the Cathars and the resulting Albigensian Crusade - in southern France. Led by the example of Bernard of Clairvaux, Cistercian monks turned their attention to the world outside the monastery walls in response to the threat posed by heretical Christians, in particular the Cathars. The white monks, withother intellectuals, turned to pen, pulpit and popular preaching to counteract heresy, some accepting posts as bishops and papal legates, helping and even directing the Albigensian crusade, and contributing to the formulation ofprocedures for inquisition. Kienzle examines this important but little-studied aspect of Cistercian history to discover how and why the Order undertook endeavours that drew the monks outside their monastic vocation. The analysis of texts about the preaching campaigns and their contexts illuminate the ways in which medieval monastic authors perceived heresy, preached, and wrote against it. Professor BEVERLY MAYNE KIENZLE teaches at Harvard Divinity School.Trade ReviewLearned and thoughtful. HISTORY * A particularly helpful introduction to a group of key issues in twelfth-century history still inadequately recognised. * ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW *Table of ContentsAppendix to introduction: deconstructing - close reading, rhetorical criticism, and historiography of persecution and heresy. The Lord's vineyard in the 12th century; monastic spirituality and literature - the domestic vineyard; Bernard of Clairvaux, the 1143/44 sermons and the 1145 preaching mission - from the domestic to the Lord's vineyard; Henry of Clairvaux, the 1178 and 1181 missions, and the campaign against the Waldensians - driving the foxes from the vineyard; Innocent III's papacy and the Crusade years, 1198-1229 - weeding the vineyard; Helinand of Froidmont and the events of 1229 - planting virtues in the vineyard.
£75.00
Henry Bradshaw Society The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England,
Book SynopsisFirst full-scale survey and examination of liturgical practice and its fundamental changes over four centuries. At the heart of life in any medieval Christian religious community was the communal recitation of the daily "hours of prayer" or Divine Office. This book draws on narrative, conciliar, and manuscript sources to reconstruct the history of how the Divine Office was sung in Anglo-Saxon minster churches from the coming of the first Roman missionaries in 597 to the height of the "monastic revival" in the tenth century. Going beyond both the hagiographic "Benedictine" assumptions of older scholarship and the cautious agnosticism of more recent historians of Anglo-Saxon Christianity, the author demonstrates that the early Anglo-Saxon Church followed a non-Benedictine "Roman" monasticliturgical tradition. Despite Viking depredations and native laxity, this tradition survived, enriched through contact with varied Continental liturgies, into the tenth century. Only then did a few advanced monastic reformers conclude, based on their study of ninth-century Frankish reforms fully explained for the first time in this book, that English monks and nuns ought to follow the liturgical prescriptions of the Rule of St Benedict to the letter. Fragmentary manuscript survivals reveal how monastic leaders such as Dunstan and Æthelwold variously adapted the native English liturgical tradition - or replaced it - to implement this forgotten central plank of the "Benedictine Reform". Jesse D. Billett is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Divinity, Trinity College, Toronto.Trade ReviewMagisterial . . . This excellently written book should be in your library, or even on your shelf, because it has so much detail in its pages that you may find yourself referring back to it often. It is, in short, a very well-written book with succinct and clear conclusions filled with erudite and scholarly analysis, but still accessible to those of us who know less about liturgy. * JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY *The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England has earned itself a place of honor alongside Pfaff's The Liturgy in Medieval England and The Liturgical Books of Anglo Saxon England on the liturgical bookshelf. Students of the English liturgy will be starting from Billett's new narrative for years to come. * WORSHIP *Jesse Billett has produced a truly magisterial work on the development of the Divine Office throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. * SPECULUM *Billett has achieved a major piece of scholarship, and it should be circulated as widely as possible. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW *This is a book not only for specialists in liturgical history but also for anyone interested in the varieties of Anglo-Saxon religious life. Because Billett writes so accessibly about even the most technical aspects of his subject, the results of his important research should reach a wide audience. * CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW *The author uses extensive documentation to craft a narrative that steers away from some of the traditional simplification that assumed all monks, from Augustine of Canterbury on, were Benedictine and thus the liturgical prayer was also. * AMERICAN MONASTIC NEWSLETTER *Table of ContentsTowards a 'New Narrative' of the History of the Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England The Divine Office in the Latin West in the Early Middle Ages The Divine Office in England from the Augustinian Mission to the First Viking Invasions, 597 - c.835 The Divine Office in England from the first Viking age to the abbacy of Dunstan at Glastonbury, c.835 - c.940 The Divine Office and the Tenth-Century English Benedictine Reform A Methodology for the Study of Anglo-Saxon Chant Books for the Office Two Witnesses to the Chant of the Secular Office in England in the Tenth Century A Fragment of a Tenth-Century English Benedictine 'Breviary' A Fragment of a Tenth-Century English Benedictine Chant Book Conclusion: Ways of Making a Benedictine Office Appendices Bibliography Index of Manuscripts Index of Liturgical Forms
£92.11
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Cartulary of Alvingham Priory
Book SynopsisEdition of documents from a Gilbertine "double house" of monks and nuns reveals much about religious life at the time. Alvingham Priory (founded in 1155), situated just to the north-east of Louth in Lincolnshire, was one of the famous Gilbertine houses of the county: double houses of monks and nuns following the rule of St Gilbert of Sempringham.Its cartulary, created circa 1264, contains over 1,300 entries. Most are copies of charters granting lands, property, rents and privileges, but it also includes genealogies of benefactors, valuations of the priory's property, memoranda and accounts of disputes. Many documents record the names of those who entered the community as nuns or canons, or who were associating themselves with it by requests for confraternity or burial, throwing light on the way inwhich local families interacted with the priory and with each other. Meanwhile, the details of lands granted to the priory provide information about local land-holders, field- and place-names, farming practices and the various activities which supported the religious community. Although its holdings were scattered across north-east Lincolnshire, from Conesby to Boston and from Lincoln to Saltfleetby, much of the priory's property was located in the low-lying lands east of Louth, and its charters demonstrate the importance of the area's waterways, bridges, ditches and banks, not just as geographical boundaries but as resources to be exploited, maintained and, importantly, to be shared in a harmonious way by the local community, religious and lay. The documents are presented here with introduction and notes. Jill Redford gained her PhD at the University of York and is assistant archivist tothe Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York.Trade ReviewUndoubtedly valuable.and a prime example of very thorough and competent work. * SEHEPUNKTE *Table of ContentsPreface Bibliography Introduction Editorial Method The Cartulary Glossary Appdenices Index
£54.00
York Medieval Press The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England
Book SynopsisDrawing upon a surprising wealth of evidence found in surviving manuscripts, this book restores friars to their rightful place in the history of English health care. Friars are often overlooked in the picture of health care in late medieval England. Physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, barbers, midwives - these are the people we think of immediately as agents of healing; whilst we identify university teachers as authorities on medical writings. Yet from their first appearance in England in the 1220s to the dispersal of the friaries in the 1530s, four orders of friars were active as healers of every type. Their care extended beyond the circle of their own brethren: patients included royalty, nobles and bishops, and they also provided charitable aid and relief to the poor. They wrote about medicine too. Bartholomew the Englishman and Roger Bacon were arguably the most influential authors, alongside the Dominican Henry Daniel. Nor should we forget the anonymous Franciscan compilers of the Tabula medicine, a handbook of cures, which, amongst other items, contains case histories of friars practising medicine. Even after the Reformation, these texts continued to circulate and find new readers amongst practitioners and householders. This book restores friars to their rightful place in the history of English health care, exploring the complex, productive entanglement between care of the soul and healing of the body, in both theoretical and practical terms. Drawing upon the surprising wealth of evidence found in the surviving manuscripts, it brings to light individuals such as William Holme (c. 1400), and his patient the duke of York (d. 1402), who suffered from swollen legs. Holme also wrote about medicinal simples and gave instructions for dealing with eye and voice problems experienced by his brother Franciscans. Friars from the thirteenth century onwards wrote their medicine differently, reflecting their religious vocation as preachers and confessors.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Friars Practising Medicine 2. William Holme, medicus 3. Writing Medicine Differently 4. The Medical Culture of Friars 5. Souls and Bodies 6. Creeping into Homes 7. The Legacy of Friars' Medicine Conclusion Appendix 1: Friar practitioners Appendix 2: Friars as medical authors and compilers Bibliography Index
£54.00
Taylor & Francis Ltd The Transformation of Religious Orders in Central and Eastern Europe Sociological Insights Routledge Studies in the Sociology of Religion
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£128.25
Taylor & Francis Ltd The Transformation of Religious Orders in Central and Eastern Europe
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£37.99
Taylor & Francis Monasticism in Modern Times
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£39.99
Taylor & Francis Ltd Judaism and Collective Life Self and Community in the Religious Kibbutz 1 Routledge Studies in Religion
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£128.25
Taylor & Francis Ltd Buddhist Monasticism in East Asia
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£51.29
Taylor & Francis Monasticism in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£43.99
Taylor & Francis The Monastic Footprint in PostReformation Movements
This book examines the influence of the monastic tradition beyond the Reformation. Where the built monastic environment had been dissolved, desire for the spiritual benefits of monastic living still echoed within theological and spiritual writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a virtual exegetical template. The volume considers how the writings of monastic authors were appropriated in post-Reformation movements by those seeking a more fervent spiritual life, and how the concept of an internal cloister of monastic/ascetic spirituality influenced several Anglican writers during the Restoration. There is a careful examination of the monastic influence upon the Wesleys and the foundation and rise of Methodism. Drawing on a range of primary sources, the book will be of particular interest to scholars of monastic and Methodist history, and to those engaged in researching ecclesiology and in ecumenical dialogues.
£37.99
Taylor & Francis Ltd Greek Monasticism in Southern Italy
Book SynopsisThis volume was conceived with the double aim of providing a background and a further context for the new Dumbarton Oaks English translation of the Life of St Neilos from Rossano, founder of the monastery of Grottaferrata near Rome in 1004. Reflecting this double aim, the volume is divided into two parts. Part I, entitled Italo-Greek Monasticism, builds the background to the Life of Neilos by taking several multi-disciplinary approaches to the geographical area, history and literature of the region denoted as Southern Italy. Part II, entitled The Life of St Neilos, offers close analyses of the text of Neilos's hagiography from socio-historical, textual, and contextual perspectives. Together, the two parts provide a solid introduction and offer in-depth studies with original outcomes and wide-ranging bibliographies. Using monasticism as a connecting thread between the various zones and St Neilos as the figure who walked over mountains aTable of ContentsIntroduction Barbara Crostini Part I: Italo-Greek Monasticism 1. Monastic Spirituality of the Italo-Greek Monks David Hester 2. Italo-Greek Monastic Typika Cristina Torre 3. Greek Monasticism in Campania and Latium from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century Vera von Falkenhausen 4. Art and Architecture for Byzantine Monks in Calabria: Sources, Monuments, Paintings and Objects (Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries) Lorenzo Riccardi 5. Family Hagiography and Christian Resistance in the Tenth Century: The Bioi of Sabas, Christopher and Makarios Adele Cilento 6. Historical Echoes in Italo-Greek Hagiographies of the Norman Age Gioacchino Strano 7. Monastic Interactions Between Calabria and Mount Athos in the Middle Ages Enrico Morini 8. Nicholas-Nektarios of Otranto: A Greek Monk Under Roman Obedience Claudio Schiano Part II: The Life of St. Neilos 9. Neighbors: Jews and Judaism in the Life of St. Neilos the Younger Giancarlo Lacerenza 10. Calabria and the Muslims During Saint Neilos’s Lifetime Alessandro Vanoli 11. "Ceramiclast" in the Bios of St Neilos Raymond Capra 12. The Homosexual Background Attributed to a Textual Gap in the Life of St Neilos from Rossano: A Re-Evaluation Andrea Luzzi 13. East Meets West, West Meets East?: Constructing Difference in First Life of St Adalbert and in the Life of St Neilos David Kalhous 14. Neilos the Younger and Benedict: The Greek Hymns Composed by Neilos in Campania Annick Peters-Custot 15. Neilos’s Long-Lasting Marks on Grottaferrata’s Identity Ines Angeli Murzaku 16. St. Bartholomew of Grottaferrata Between Tradition and Innovation Angela Prinzi
£39.99
Cambridge University Press Virtuosity Charisma and Social Order
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£46.54
Cambridge University Press Durham Priory 14001450 6 Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Third Series Series Number 6
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£31.90
Cambridge University Press The Early Humiliati
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£25.64
Cambridge University Press The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£31.90
Cambridge University Press The Monastic Order in Yorkshire 1069 1215
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£42.74
Cambridge University Press The Politics of Ritual Kinship
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£22.99
Cambridge University Press Buddhist Monk Buddhist Layman A Study of Urban Monastic Organization in Central Thailand 6 Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology Series Number 6
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£29.44
Cambridge University Press The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order Cambridge Companions to Religion
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£25.64
Cambridge University Press The Monks and Monasteries of Constantinople CA. 350 850
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£38.52
Cambridge University Press Runaway Religious in Medieval England c12401540 32 Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Fourth Series Series Number 32
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£37.04
Cambridge University Press John of Wales A Study of the Works and Ideas of a ThirteenthCentury Friar 10 Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Fourth Series Series Number 10
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£37.04
Cambridge University Press Early Franciscan Government
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£29.44
Cambridge University Press The Monastic Order in England A History of its Development from the Times of St Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council 9401216
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£45.16
Cambridge University Press The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform 25 Cambridge Studies in AngloSaxon England Series Number 25
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£116.85
Cambridge University Press The Early Humiliati 43 Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Fourth Series Series Number 43
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£98.15
Cambridge University Press The Politics of Ritual Kinship
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£110.20
Cambridge University Press Nuns Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and CounterReformation Italy
Book SynopsisThis well-illustrated and innovative book analyses convent culture in sixteenth-century Italy through the medium of three unpublished nuns' chronicles, using a comparative methodology of 'connected differences' to examine their intellectual and imaginative achievement, and to investigate how they fashioned and preserved individual and convent identities by writing chronicles.Trade Review'… splendid in its objectivity, allowing its primary sources to speak for themselves … Professor Lowe is much to be commended on the thoroughness of her study. This is historical writing at its best: focused, colourful, vibrant.' Art Newspaper'K. J. P. Lowe's Nun's Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy is a truly impressive work that reflects the wide range and depth of its author's knowledge of Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italian culture. Lowe does a fine job of bringing these neglected writings to life, and into a context which invites further imaginative engagement with these nun's lives.' Reformation' … important and richly nuanced …'. Journal of Ecclesiastical HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction; Part I. History Writing and Authorship: 1. The creation of chronicles: contents and appearance; 2. The authors of the chronicles; Part II. Historical and Cultural Context: 3. The convents and physical space; 4. Nuns and convent communities; 5. Rules and traditions; Part III. Chronicles and the Culture of Convent Identity: 6. The chronicles and ceremonial life; 7. Cultural creativity and cultural production; 8. Convents and art; Conclusion.
£114.00
Cambridge University Press Monastic Life in AngloSaxon England c. 600900
Book SynopsisThis major 2006 history of English monasticism explores the history of the Church between the conversion to Christianity in the sixth century and a monastic revival in the tenth. Sarah Foot argues that historians have been wrong to see minsters in the light of ideals of Benedictine monasticism.Trade Review'A beautifully structured and magisterial treatment of a major subject in early medieval English history by the outstanding early medieval historian of her generation.' Professor Nicholas Brooks, University of Birmingham'Lucidly written, attractively illustrated, magisterially argued, and beautifully produced, this book shows not only what early Anglo-Saxon ministers did, but also gives persuasive answers to the question: why did people adopt this particular form of religious life?' Church Times'Required reading for anyone interested in Anglo-Saxon religious life before the tenth-century Benedictine reforms … a handsome volume.' The American Historical Review'A truly outstanding book, which will undoubtedly become a standard text on the subject.' History'I wish this book had been published 50 years ago, when I was about to embark on my postgraduate career. … Now, Foot's study of the early Church, with its rethinking of what monasterium means and its putting of the reform movement (and its 'ideological literature') into perspective, gives us a freer hand to evaluate the church buildings on their archaeological merits without constantly looking over our shoulders at Dunstan and Co.' Journal of Medieval Archaeology'Well written, clearly organised and carefully researched, this volume offers much to anyone interested in the spread, nature and role of early medieval monasticism in England and beyond, and in the character of society in general in this complex period.' The Journal and Report of the Medieval Settlement Research Group'After setting out her aims and approaches with clarity, Foot begins by looking at 'the ideal minister' as imagined in sources from the period … The book makes a strong argument for diversity and variety in the monastic life of earlier Anglo-Saxon England and offers an authoritative yet accessible survey of this complex subject.' Medium AevumTable of Contents1. Introduction: situating the problem; 2. The ideal minster; Part I. Within the Walls: 3. The making of minsters; 4. The minster community; 5. Daily life within the minster; Part II. Without the Walls: 6. Dependencies, affinities, clusters; 7. Minsters in the world; Coda; 8. Horizons; Bibliography.
£36.09
Cambridge University Press The Monks and Monasteries of Constantinople CA. 350 850
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£112.50
